In thirteen vivid stories, award-winning author Earl Lovelace paints a compassionate, often humorous portrait of everyday life in Trinidad. Ordinary people like Victor the barber, Shoemaker Arnold, Miss Ross, and Blues and Joebell are invested with the magic of their colorful, changing world. Written with Lovelace’s characteristic ear for melody and rhythm, A Brief Conversion and Other Stories is an invaluable contribution to contemporary world literature.

“Lovelace evoke[s] Trinidad in a generous, torrential prose that seems to hold every complexity—of history, of ethnicity, of reason and magic alike—within its rushing energy.”—New York Times Book Review

“In an island patois that, for all of its richness and color, is always to the point, Lovelace expresses powerful and often subtle ideas with memorable directness.”—Chicago Tribune

“Lovelace deftly conveys his hallmark theme of the search for a Caribbean and a personal identity.”—Multicultural Review

Earl Lovelace, the “consummate Caribbean man of letters” (Publishers Weekly), was born in Toco, Trinidad in 1935. His many books include the novels While Gods Are Falling, winner of the Independence Literary Award; Salt, winner of the 1997 Commonwealth Writers Prize; and The Dragon Can't Dance. He resides in his native Trinidad, and is on the faculty of Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.